Relentless Pursuit

Speaking of TFA, I just finished reading Relentless Pursuit (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307265714/tilsoncapitalpar) and can't recommend it highly enough. Here's one of my favorite excerpts (beginning on page 210), in which Chad, a 2nd-year TFAer at Locke High School in LA (among the city's worst) who was promoted to Vice Principal, has to figure out how to deal with the mid-year departure of a new TFA teacher. Reading this makes my blood boil:

Who do you screw? It was a question Chad asked himself nearly every day. The other questions he couldn't get out of his head as he was making the tough calls were: Is this something I'd want for my kids? Would I be OK with this? The answer was almost always no.

After Dave Buerhle left, Chad had to figure out what to do with five orphaned classes of twelfth-graders. Any way Chad looked at it, someone got screwed; the only thing to be determined was who and to what degree...

In the daily battle of who gets screwed at Locke, Buerhle's kids lost. But they knew that the moment he told them he was quitting. Their reaction to the news had been, "Why do all the good white teachers leave?"

If they had posted the question to Chad, his unspoken response would have been "Because the school doesn't work." And though he took the position as VP because he thought he could change that, he had been sadly mistaken. He had no power. His job was only a balancing act -- between evils. At least when he was a teacher, he had some fantastic days; in fact, most days were fantastic. Now every time he walked through the door into his office he knew he was entering a no-win zone.

It was maddening to have to make these administrative Hobbesian choices. Kids in suburban schools could live with a couple of duds for teachers, but not the kids at Locke, or any school that looked like Locke, or any school in which a TFA teacher worked. Locke kids arrived with fifth-grade reading levels. A good teacher could move them up one level. A fantastic teacher -- a teacher making what TFA called significant gains -- could boost them two grades in a year. At Locke, students couldn't afford to have just one or two good teachers. They needed four fantastic ones. And they weren't getting them.

One reason was because schools like Locke were safe havens for lousy teachers. Dr. Wells [Locke's principal] reckoned that 35 percent of his teachers had no business being in a classroom. But the powerful teachers union, the UTLA, protected tenured teachers regardless of their classroom performance. There was a process at LAUSD to either get rid of bad teachers or make them better -- but it required administrators to jump through hoops. Under the rules of the union contract, supervisors were bound to conduct and document repeated rounds of observations and evaluations carried out along a very specific time line, and to offer interventions and remediation through professional development where needed. Even when a convincing case had been built against a teacher, a missed deadline could derail the entire process. The teacher evaluations were divvied up among the administrators at Locke. Dr. Wells took the toughest cases himself. He tried mightily. He had about twenty-two teachers in his sights, but the union contract made tenured teachers just about bullet-proof. Chad didn't get it. Why are we so concerned about protecting teachers and not kids?

It was hard to fire a bad teacher, but it did occasionally happen. The terrible irony was that the alternative to a successful dismissal was often worse. Good teachers weren't exactly lining up to teach at Locke, so often the only candidates sending in resumes were district castaways looking for a place to hole up...

Wells estimated that 40 percent of his staff were hardworking, committed educators. And for a long time, Chad had believed that if Locke could get a critical mass of them to stick around, real change could take place. But the dysfunction wore good teachers down and forced them out. With up to thirty teachers leaving every year, some of them TFAers, there was no way to build an enduring culture of achievement. Without that, Locke's numbers might trend up ever so slightly, but for all intents and purposes, the school would continue to flatline.

Locke was on every government education agency's watch list, but the consequences for failing to make the mandated improvements were never clear...

To Pander Or Not To Pander, That Is The Question...

Joe Williams, Exec Dir of DFER, shares a trenchant analysis of Obama's decision whether to speak at the NEA convention/Panderpalooza. I love this line: "a guy who is running for president on the whole 'Yes We Can' theme doesn't want to spend too much time kissing the rings of the folks who bankroll the 'No We Can't' movement in American public eduation."

Normally at this point, the presidential nominee owes the world to the NEA for all the work it did to get him to the general election, except, uh, Obama doesn't owe nuthun this time around, yo. In fact, there are some folks in the Obama camp who can point to scars they suffered at the NEA's hands in battlegrounds like Nevada (and others who have tracked every dollar the AFT spent trying to decapitate their man Obama.)

So the decision about how to handle the Representative Assembly/Panderpalooza is a tough one. On the one hand, it makes no sense for a candidate who cares about education to even remotely come off as having snubbed teachers - a factor most of us consider to be the most important ingredient in all of this education stuff.

On the other hand, a guy who is running for president on the whole "Yes We Can" theme doesn't want to spend too much time kissing the rings of the folks who bankroll the "No We Can't" movement in American public eduation.

So it appears Obama has reached the perfect compromise: He won't attend the NEA Panderpalooza event in DC this weekend, but will have his speech beamed in via satellite. Good call, I think.

It is worth noting that John Kerry also made the decision four years ago to skip out on the NEA Panderpalooza event, appearing via satellite with his recently-announced running-mate, John Edwards. NEA boss Reg Weaver didn't take too kindly to the snub (remember when he held up his cell phone so that all 10,000 delegates could scream their disapproval at once?)

I think it is safe to say the the political "golden era" for the NEA is long past...

NEA Convention Coverage

Obama gave his speech via satellite to the NEA today and at one point was booed -- I LOVE IT! Three cheers for Obama for having the guts to say something he knew wouldn't be popular with the most powerful Democratic interest group.

The Education Intelligence Agency

NEA Convention Coverage

July 5, 2008

Barack Obama took the bull by the horns today in accepting the endorsement of the National Education Association Representative Assembly. He spoke live via satellite from Butte, Montana, with a group of local teachers behind him. EIA’s video of the speech is posted at http://www.eiaonline.com and on YouTube.

He expressed support for much of NEA's agenda - overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, higher pay, college tuition for new teachers, etc. - but he also specifically noted his backing of charter schools (around the 4:45 mark of the video) and caused quite a stir, including some very loud booing, when he said (around the 6:10 mark):

"Under my plan, districts will be able to design programs to give educators who serve them as mentors to new teachers the salary increases they've earned. They'll be able to reward those who teach underserved areas or take on added responsibility. As teachers learn new skills or serve their students better or if they consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well."

After the booing, Obama said, "I know this wasn't necessarily the most popular part of my speech last year, but I said it then, and I'm saying it again today, because it is what I believe."

New and Not Improved

This NYT editorial challenges Obama to show that he will truly "change the old order of things" and break out of "catering to special pleaders". It would be hard to find a better issue than education reform with which to demonstrate this, so let's hope that his speech to the NEA is just the start of some bold new ideas in this area that shake up the immoral and unacceptable status quo.

Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.